Ok, just got back from a couple weeks diving & lobster hunting so I'm
feeling much better now...

My personal top 10 (no relation to official results)...
Miro -  A surreal portrait of a surrealist artist, reflecting an environment
of shapes and colors symbolizing humanity, including the artist himself,
just as an artist reflects himself and his environment in his work. A
beautifully recursive concept. Artistically superb, and technically
excellent. My top pick.

Modfruit -  Another masterpiece suffering from a surreal artistic score
(!?!?!)  A surreal twist on the often controversial real topic of genetic
modification, presented in a beautiful array of colors and lighting.
Technically excellent, great job on the isosurfaces. My #2.

Majesty -  A beautiful excursion into a surreal endgame.  The desolate
background symbolizes the chess players exclusion of all else, focusing only
on the game. The threaded objects hanging overhead impart both a feeling of
impending doom and simultaneously a hint of possible escape. Excellent
lighting.   A good #3.

Twisted -  Beautiful mix of confinement & openness. Technically &
conceptually excellent. Artistically I felt the dominance of the flat
background and open sky in the top half of the image detracted, otherwise
this would have been # 3.

Attainment -  Conceptually & artistically superb.  A beautiful and original
exploration of the theme.  Technically lacking a bit in depth, better
lighting would help, and better modeling of the foreground objects instead
of image maps. Overall though, an excellent image.

Flower -  A nicely crafted flower that hints at several human themes; the
eye looking heavenward, the tears, the roots breaking out of the confinement
of the flowerpot. The vivid colors of the plant and table speak of life, and
stand out in a barren surrounding, devoid of life and offering no answers.
Nicely done.

Memorial -  A technical masterpiece that forces the viewer to look and look
again.  Artistically and conceptually however it seems static, there is no
sense of direction or resolution. Perhaps some reaction from the woman, or
some focal point on the wall that she might be drawn to.  Still, an
excellent image.

Rewind -  Nothing in particular about this really stands out, I just like
it.  Good old fashioned solid across the board competence artistically,
technically & conceptually.  Sometimes, that's what it takes.

Death of a Mind -  A haunting and emotional image. Excellent implementation
of a complex concept. I think a little more color variation in the lighting
would help portray some of the complexity of the human mind & spirit, but a
great image nonetheless.

Odd -  Although hurt on the originality score by the high number of
Dali-esque entries, I thought this one was still quite good enough to stand
on it's own.  Shows a good understanding of both Dali and his surrealism
style. Excellent composition & use of color.

There were far too many good entries in this round to dicuss all of them, so
following is a list of other favorites:
Two Roses
Threshhold
Life time on the beach
DaliLove
The Gates of Knowledge
Fungi
Before the First Concert
Barrier
Antique

RG

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> My personal top 10 (no relation to official results)...
.
.
.

> Death of a Mind -  A haunting and emotional image. Excellent
implementation
> of a complex concept. I think a little more color variation in the
lighting
> would help portray some of the complexity of the human mind & spirit, but
a
> great image nonetheless.


Hey, cool!

Thanks for adding my picture to your favorite list. :-)

I know that there are some things which can be changed, but it was not easy
to get a satisfying version.

--

DigitalTwilight
#homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de
#email: kin### [at] gmxnet


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Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
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gonzo wrote:
> Ok, just got back from a couple weeks diving & lobster hunting so I'm
> feeling much better now...
> 
> My personal top 10 (no relation to official results)...
> Miro -  A surreal portrait of a surrealist artist, reflecting an environment
> of shapes and colors symbolizing humanity, including the artist himself,
> just as an artist reflects himself and his environment in his work. A
> beautifully recursive concept. Artistically superb, and technically
> excellent. My top pick.
> 

Ron thanks for the compliments and the vote.  I found that while working 
on my entry, the topic raised many questions that I couldn't really 
answer.  That may be in part why I have been more quiet this round when 
it comes to commenting on the winners.  I never really found a coherent 
way to judge the entries.

Your entry, Awakening, I thought was an energetic and inventive approach 
to the topic.  And you encountered some interesting issues.  By looking 
for a way to incorporate chance into your image-making you highlighted a 
couple of things.  One, that raytracing is primarily a depictional 
paradigm.  Thus the raytracing artist is usually confronted with the 
decision of what things to put into the picture.  Furthermore the scene 
language actually implements this part of the process and makes it 
potentially subject to automation.  Second, that any attempt to 
introduce chance into the creative process must necessarily be only 
partially successful. The use of chance must be contained within a 
structure that you do make decisions about.  This is exactly the same 
problem that early surrealists who experimented with chance came up against.

I thought Shay's entry, The Venue, also was very good.  It seemed to 
point to the relationship between what is systematic and what is 
arbitrary in the world, and seemed to draw an analogy with that 
dichotomy and the contrast between what is public, and what is intensely 
private, in experience.  Interpreting the meaning did rely on the 
accompanying text and the text together with the image was engaging yet 
arcane.  It brings Duchamp's, The Large Glass, to mind, especially with 
the emphasis on what is inscrutible and private.  It seems that Shay is 
trying very hard to forge a conceptual approach with his raytracing and 
wanted to avoid, at any cost, terrain where the banalities of surrealism 
intersected with the hackneyed effects of the medium.

One of the themes that runs through the history of surrealism is an 
interest in the eye as an organ of perception, and its relationship with 
other senses and means of perception.  Throughout surrealism the 
dominance of the eye is accented with a relish for tactile effects. 
Strong lighting using the Renaissance 1/3 rule is repeatedly used to 
give us tactile hovering forms in a three dimensional space.  Raking 
light sets off textured surfaces. Collages are composed from finely 
crosshatched engravings. Tactility is a complex quality because it 
requires our sense of the body as perceiver.  Yet it can also be 
referenced indirectly, that is, through vision.  I thought that 
Still-Life with Flower by Michael Hunter recalled this aspect of 
surrealism very well.  The strong lighting sets the form of the flower 
in sharp relief while the granular texture of the foreground plane is 
carefully represented.  Another image that makes use of surface texture 
to heightened effect is Fungi by Richard Massey.  The winning image by 
Casey Uhrig also engages our sense of tactility with its stark, 
overexposed rendering of form, its robust three-dimensionality, and the 
implied prickly surface of the "world".  Another interesting encounter 
with tactility is the image, Blue Cone, by Kelemen Csaba.
Content to be primarily, even whimsically, an abstract construction, the 
image is strikingly beautiful.  Subtle surface effects keep the 
background of saturated yellow under control, (the most difficult color 
to handle, many painters would contest), while a scintillating cloud of 
spheres spray the picture space, prickling the skin and dazzling the
eye. In another vein we have Veijo Vilva's, Before the First Concert. 
Immaculate surfaces please the eye while exquisitely formed musical 
instruments reference the ear as an organ of pleasure.

Though I can't recall, I almost certainly voted in favor of "surrealism" 
on the topic suggestion system. The humanism of the topic would have 
appealed to me.  But as I began work on my own entry I suspected that 
the topic might prove troublesome when providing a focus for the 
contest.  The problem it seemed to me is that surrealism lived as a high 
Art movement, informed many other art movements, then lived on as a form 
of popular culture.  With its multivalent relationship with both high 
and low culture, it is impossible for me to separate out all the 
possible influences that inform my concept of "surrealism".

I remember an art history course I took with the painter, Bruce Boice. 
During a break he was describing his teenage son's artwork.  He 
characterized its album cover style as "a kind of adolescent seeking of 
truth-in-strangeness".  I always thought that that comment summarized 
what is an enduring attraction of surrealist art, the sense of 
alienation, strangeness, and intense emotion combined with a seeking of 
"truth". One of the ways that this is manifest is with the creation of 
an atmosphere of malevolence, malaise, pregnant anticipation, 
foreboding, or density. Two images that are notable for recalling this 
quality are Ordutemps by Anne Monti and DaliLove by Helene Dumur.  In a 
more literary way, the need to confront the absolute through the choice 
of subject illustrates these same characteristics in Death of a Mind by 
Florian Kastell.  The convoluted subject illustrated in Harvest by Steve 
Paget signals a similar intention.  Ice on Fire by Elwin Way makes a 
depictional attempt to embody a conceptual dichotomy.

The winning image, Povworld, reflects yet another theme that I associate 
with the later influences of surrealism.  That is to say themes about 
the relationship of the geometric and mechanical to the structure of the 
organic and the natural.

Well, this is getting a bit long.

-Jim

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"gonzo" <rgo### [at] lansetcom> wrote in message
news:3f87327f@news.povray.org...

Firstly, thank you, Jim. I do feel, however, that many urban dwellers
would recognize the object and sentiment in the picture without an
explanation, especially if the picture were hanging on a wall. The size

being parallel with the bottom of the picture is a better reflection of
perception than of the reality that is expected in 3D images. I believe
that this type of picture loses a great deal when the viewer has been

other images in a short period of time. In the ironically less-literal
perception of the real world, the picture *should* appear more natural.

I do not like this topic because I think that surrealism ( in the
fashion most seen in this round  ) has a very limited vocabulary which
has been completely or very nearly exhausted. The problem in my mind is
that the emphasis is too much on the subject and not the presentation.
There are only a very small number of provocative subjects or

etc. The comparison of chess pieces to human beings and the game of



Those still messing around with surrealism to me seem to fall into two
categories. Those who keep reusing the classic images and those who
realize that those images have been overused, fill pictures with
nothing, and simply *expect* viewers to be provoked, this second group
being the type to frame a white canvas.



Awakening: I wonder if many pictures at all generated by this method
could help but look traditionally surreal. Brainstorming random objects
gives me little to work with to make a coherent scene. If surrealism
were new, then possibly hundreds of pictures could be produced by this m
ethod which would provoke viewers into hours of contemplation of the

scene, if unintentional, makes this an instructive experiment.


from the MOMA. Like I said in my original comments, this picture makes
me really wonder at your intent, Jim, because the depiction is so unlike
Miro's own work or my expectation of his personality. In that sense,
this picture is very surreal in the antagonistic way in which pictures
of a black Santa Clause are surreal.


finger on it when I first saw this picture, but have since recognized
the kitsch of Central American religious art which adds an extra
dimension to this picture and makes it far better than most of the
others. Of course, this look could be accident rather than borrowed
kitsch, but to a Texan it has strong and clear associations.

Fungi: Perhaps because the mushrooms are in a natural, if not logical,

is a picture that is put together very well and I think would be
interesting even if the mushrooms were cows or pigs. This is very subtle


Pov Planet: The think I like most about ray tracing is that a lot of

television create a forest in minutes with a few rough jabs of a large
brush. This is not possible in ray tracing. Pov Planet is an excellent
demonstration of that. Here, a bunch of crap is thrown together into a
noisy mess that is meant to pass for a detailed object. Judging by the



got to take notice of the true FREAKS in this world. Philip Chan is
keeping it real.




 -Shay

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> from the MOMA. Like I said in my original comments, this picture makes
> me really wonder at your intent, Jim, because the depiction is so unlike
> Miro's own work or my expectation of his personality. In that sense,
> this picture is very surreal in the antagonistic way in which pictures
> of a black Santa Clause are surreal.
> 


Yes I think this is an accurate criticism.  The intent was to juxtapose 
the early stylization of a self-portrait he did with the stylization of 
his later "Constellation" paintings and just see where it went.  I think 
I also had in mind a drawing similar to this one

http://www.csulb.edu/~karenk/20thcwebsite/438final/ah438fin-Full.00053.html

that I was used to seeing hang in one of the museums here,... maybe the 
MoMA. I remember it being quite pale and monochromatic. I thought of it 
as kind of a surrealist mask.  But I agree that the colors in my tracing 
took off on a course of their own and don't reflect Miro's color 
sensibility too much.

-Jim

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Jim Charter <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote in message
news:3f8f4905@news.povray.org...
> Ron thanks for the compliments and the vote.  I found that while working
> on my entry, the topic raised many questions that I couldn't really
> answer.  That may be in part why I have been more quiet this round when
> it comes to commenting on the winners.  I never really found a coherent
> way to judge the entries.

Yes, I found two distinctly different lines of comparison going on in my
judging; surrealism - "the Movement", and surreal - "the Look".  Having no
formal artistic background or education, surrealism was just a word I'd
heard thrown about alot in the sixties, but I didn't really know anything
about it. I'd always liked Dali & Magritte, but I'd never thought about why.
To me it was just a look, or effect. Cool, but meaningless (well, not
entirely meaningless, I found several of Dali's works to make quite definite
statements).

At the beginning of the round, to learn more, I first started looking at
surrealist works by several artists, but that seemed like a dead end. I
didn't want to just copy something someone had already done. Then I started
reading about Breton's interest in dreams and expressing the subconscious,
and about the artists themselves, and that was much more interesting.  I
read about one artist (don't remember now who, might have been Ernst) who
began his works by dropping bits of string, then tracing the patterns.
These gave me insight into the ideas behind the movement, and helped me
develop my own entry, but when it came to judging, it was obvious that the
Movement  took a back seat to the Look.  I think I probably ended up judging
basically on Look, but giving a good nod to images that seemed to underscore
the Movement. ( After all, even if it IS dead, it was still the topic...)

> Your entry, Awakening, I thought was an energetic and inventive approach
> to the topic.

Thanks.

<snip> couple of things.  One, that raytracing is primarily a depictional
> paradigm.  Thus the raytracing artist is usually confronted with the
> decision of what things to put into the picture. <snip>Second, that any
attempt to
> introduce chance into the creative process must necessarily be only
> partially successful. The use of chance must be contained within a
> structure that you do make decisions about.  This is exactly the same
> problem that early surrealists who experimented with chance came up
against.

Yes, I had already decided the only place chance could work effectively was
in the object selection, and even there I was limited, because I had to make
the objects first, which involved a conscious action on my part. I did make
several objects that I got the ideas from dreams I had, but only one of them
actually ended up in the image (the butterfly). I had to restrain myself
from using some of them simply because I liked them, and stick to my method
of drawing associations from random renderings. (And it was such a beautiful
pair of binoculars!)

> I thought Shay's entry, The Venue, also was very good.

For this round I had trouble fitting it into either the Look or the Movement
(although your analysis makes me look at it as much more inclined toward
Movement...)  but yes, it is a fascinating piece.  As I put in my comment,
it had a deja-vu feeling, which was kind of scary after reading the text.  I
later decided the shape was what felt familiar, while the colors give it an
emotional tone.  I played with it in PSP some (sorry Shay...) , changing the
color balance changed the whole feel, but retained the deja-vu.
NON_POV RELATED NOTE: I think it would make a very interesting sculpture,
with the shape done very large but separated from the background so that
someone could walk around or through it. Then have it lit so that depending
on viewing angle the shape or the background changed colors.

<snip>It brings Duchamp's, The Large Glass, to mind, especially with
> the emphasis on what is inscrutible and private.

Not familiar with that one, have to look it up...

 It seems that Shay is
> trying very hard to forge a conceptual approach with his raytracing and
> wanted to avoid, at any cost, terrain where the banalities of surrealism
> intersected with the hackneyed effects of the medium.

Agreed, and his avoidance of banality is not limited to surrealism ;-)

<snip>Another interesting encounter
> with tactility is the image, Blue Cone, by Kelemen Csaba.
> Content to be primarily, even whimsically, an abstract construction, the
> image is strikingly beautiful.

Yes, another simple but nice image. I hadn't mentioned it in my previous
post, but I thought it was quite good.

<snip> The problem it seemed to me is that surrealism lived as a high
> Art movement, informed many other art movements, then lived on as a form
> of popular culture.  With its multivalent relationship with both high
> and low culture, it is impossible for me to separate out all the
> possible influences that inform my concept of "surrealism".

Yep, there's my "Movement" & "Look".  Amazing how the low culture is the
popular and the high culture is labelled officially "dead".  But then, my
background is all in music, so nothing new there... "serious" music has
always been an also-ran to popular music...

<snip> The winning image, Povworld, reflects yet another theme that I
associate
> with the later influences of surrealism.  That is to say themes about
> the relationship of the geometric and mechanical to the structure of the
> organic and the natural.

Another relationship I hadn't thought of as surrealistic, but as you say,
the later influences... and add to that the influence of computers &
ray-tracing...  I don't imagine there would be many images like that if
artists were still restricted to canvas & brushes...

> Well, this is getting a bit long.

Yes, I haven't typed this much in months...

You mentioned in your miro.textfile randomness & process.  Mind providing
some insight into how you arrived at your image?

RG

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Shay <sah### [at] simcopartscom> wrote in message
news:3f901bdf$1@news.povray.org...
<snip>The size
> would help, but also that fact that characteristics like the base's
> being parallel with the bottom of the picture is a better reflection of
> perception than of the reality that is expected in 3D images.

Who's expectations, the viewers or the artist?  I also think that
photorealism is overemphasized in raytracing, yet it seems its the artists
generally who perpetuate this, not the viewer.  The viewer usually doesn't
much care how the image was created, they only register if they like it or
not. (Of course, there is the fact that a high percentage of CG viewers are
also CG artists...)

I believe
> that this type of picture loses a great deal when the viewer has been
> conditioned to expect "super-literal" perspective by looking at 100
> other images in a short period of time.

Keep your eye on the screen... you're getting sleepy... very sleepy...

> I do not like this topic because I think that surrealism ( in the
> fashion most seen in this round  ) has a very limited vocabulary which
> has been completely or very nearly exhausted. The problem in my mind is
> that the emphasis is too much on the subject and not the presentation.

Tricky... focus too much on presentation and the subject blurs...  the
viewer, unless they are another artist, loses interest.

> There are only a very small number of provocative subjects or
> "subconscious metaphors." Weapons, clocks, trains, mirrors, game pieces,
> etc. The comparison of chess pieces to human beings and the game of
> chess to life is so obvious that I'm sure it was only mildly interesting
> the first time. Now it's painful for me to see.

So the challenge for the artist is to find a new perspective, and then
balance subject and presentation in such a manner as to draw the viewer in
such a way as to allow them to find that perspective.

<snip>
> Some takes, now that I've subjected you to my rant:
>
> Awakening: I wonder if many pictures at all generated by this method
> could help but look traditionally surreal. Brainstorming random objects
> gives me little to work with to make a coherent scene. If surrealism
> were new, then possibly hundreds of pictures could be produced by this m
> ethod which would provoke viewers into hours of contemplation of the
> artist's intent.

My idea was that the coherency was established not in the objects
themselves, but in the brainstorming of the random selections.  So I'd have
kept generating random selections until something took shape.  But was my
brainstorming influenced by the fact that I had made the objects myself, so
they already had some identity in my mind before I started?  I'd like to try
this experiment with several artists all contributing objects (and no one
can see the other objects until a specified number have been produced), then
each artist uses the same random set of selections to brainstorm. I'd be
curious to see what each produced.

 I think that the traditionally surreal look of your
> scene, if unintentional, makes this an instructive experiment.

Well, my intent was to produce something in the spirit of the original
movement (see my remarks about "look" -vs- "movement" in my reply to Jim's
post).  The fact that you and some of the other comments referred to the
result as "traditional" and "classic" makes me think I succeeded in that,
but whether that has any meaning or validity in the present and much broader
interpretation of surreal is another matter... but it was certainly
instructive!  I probably learned more from working on this round than any
other single piece I've done.

>
> Miro: I saw a couple of Miro's works this weekend on loan to Houston
> from the MOMA. Like I said in my original comments, this picture makes
> me really wonder at your intent, Jim, because the depiction is so unlike
> Miro's own work or my expectation of his personality. In that sense,
> this picture is very surreal in the antagonistic way in which pictures
> of a black Santa Clause are surreal.

Interesting... I didn't find it at all antagonistic. But then, I'm not at
all familiar with Miro's work.

> Still-Life with Flower: Beautiful and well done. I couldn't put my
> finger on it when I first saw this picture, but have since recognized
> the kitsch of Central American religious art which adds an extra
> dimension to this picture and makes it far better than most of the
> others. Of course, this look could be accident rather than borrowed
> kitsch, but to a Texan it has strong and clear associations.

Ahhh, thank you, now I remember what this reminded me of.  The colors are
reminiscent of the weavings and paintings I used to see when I was in
Venezuela, Belize & Costa Rica.

> Fungi: Perhaps because the mushrooms are in a natural, if not logical,
> setting. This picture doesn't scream "LOOK!!! MUSHROOMS!!" to me. This
> is a picture that is put together very well and I think would be
> interesting even if the mushrooms were cows or pigs. This is very subtle
> and it's a shame that he had to phUxx0r it up by cobbing the easel idea.

Heh heh, that easel cropped up a few times in the round...

<snip> ..some others, but it's time to get back to work.

Work???   Now THAT's surreal! ;-)  (Sorry, couldn't resist... I still have
two days of vacation left.)

RG

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"gonzo" <rgo### [at] lansetcom> wrote in message
news:3f92f847@news.povray.org...
|
| Who's expectations, the viewers or the artist?
| I also think that photorealism is overemphasized
| in raytracing, yet it seems its the artists
| generally who perpetuate this, not the viewer.

Photo-realism isn't what I meant. I was speaking about the noticeable
and of course accurate perspective in cg drawings and photographs. When
I'm driving, the road ahead of me looks flat, but in a photo or CG
render, the road, earth, ocean, bottom of a building, whatever appears
to rise up to meet the sky. This is of couse true even in real life, but
I don't really think about it unless looking at a picture. I hope that
made at least some sense.

The whole discrepancy might be all in my head. I have incredible spatial
skills when it comes to tests where shapes need to be rotated around in
your head, or chess, making a shape out of other shapes, or any of that
IQ test type stuff. Once I pick up a pencil, however, I am lost. I can't
sketch even the simplest thing. Sometimes it feels like I can really see
something on the paper, but even then, I can't even draw a close
approximation. When I see the planning sketches of some CG artists, I
think "Damn, if I could draw like that, I wouldn't even bother with CG."

|
| Tricky... focus too much on presentation and the subject
| blurs...  the viewer, unless they are another artist,
| loses interest. So the challenge for the artist is to find
| a new perspective, and then balance subject and presentation
| in such a manner as to draw the viewer in such a way as to
| allow them to find that perspective.

Problem is, the presentation might have been "borrowed" in the first
place. I didn't know about this guy until a week ago, so hopefully Jim
will drop in here with a little history if I'm wrong, but it appears
that the look which we associate with surrealism was stolen from:
http://www.mcs.csuhayward.edu/~malek/Chirico.html .

I really think that the challenge is to walk away from (Dali/Magritte
type) surrealism completely. Some things are magnificent, but only hold
enough potential for one or a few artists. Rockabilly music is a good
contemporary example. It all sounds the same because even the slightest
change from the formula makes it *not* Rockabilly music. This is
equivalent to an entire art movement being centered around the works of
Piet Mondrian.

|
| I'd like to try this experiment with several artists all contributing
| objects (and no one can see the other objects until a specified number
| have been produced), then each artist uses the same random set of
| selections to brainstorm. I'd be curious to see what each produced.

A simpler way would be to put in a very general word like 'opening',
'tomorrow', 'similar', or 'way' into a search engine and to then take
the 50th page from the search and extract all of the concrete nouns.

|
| Well, my intent was to produce something in the spirit of the original
| movement (see my remarks about "look" -vs- "movement" in my reply to
| Jim's post).  The fact that you and some of the other comments
referred
| to the result as "traditional" and "classic" makes me think I
succeeded
| in that, but whether that has any meaning or validity in the present
| and much broader interpretation of surreal is another matter... but it
| was certainly instructive!  I probably learned more from working on
| this round than any other single piece I've done.

Another experiment would then be to take your objects and create
something which is as far away from surreal as possible. Just take every
characteristic which you associate with the look of the pictures you
expect to create with the method and reverse each.

This is what I meant when I characterized Jim's image as "antagonistic."
It is a picture of Miro, but appears to me to be very anti-Miro. Jim
posted a link to one of his references, Miro's own protrait of himself.
Here is a link to another of his sources (though perhaps not
specifically this painting):

http://www.moma.org/momalearning/images/pop_ups/miro_small.jpg

 -Shay

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Shay wrote:

> Problem is, the presentation might have been "borrowed" in the first
> place. I didn't know about this guy until a week ago, so hopefully Jim
> will drop in here with a little history if I'm wrong, but it appears
> that the look which we associate with surrealism was stolen from:
> http://www.mcs.csuhayward.edu/~malek/Chirico.html .

The early 'metaphysical' works of de Chirico were championed by the 
early surrealist leaders ( I think it was Breton primarily ) as havin a 
quality that epitomized the very essence of surrealism.


> This is what I meant when I characterized Jim's image as "antagonistic."
> It is a picture of Miro, but appears to me to be very anti-Miro. Jim
> posted a link to one of his references, Miro's own protrait of himself.
> Here is a link to another of his sources (though perhaps not
> specifically this painting):
> 
> http://www.moma.org/momalearning/images/pop_ups/miro_small.jpg
> 

I realized as I was making the picture that elements of it were rather 
contradictory if it is taken as a strict *tribute* to Miro.  "Perverse" 
was the actual word that kept coming into my head.  Especially with the 
saccharin, perfumy colors and the easy drama of the realistic eyes.  I 
let the picture lead the way.  It was a gamble.  As your link 
illustrates, it was the space of the later Miro "constellation 
paintings" with a kind of silhouetted screen over an ambiguous soup of 
color, that had my interest.  I guess one point that I wanted to make 
was that this flat yet infinite soupy space was as common to surrealism 
as was the infinite horizon 'dreamscapes' of Dali and followers.

-Jim

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"Jim Charter" <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote in message
news:3f9423d6@news.povray.org...
|
| "Perverse" was the actual word that kept coming into my head.

Yes, "Perverse" is a much better word for it. "Antagonistic" has a
negative connotation which I did not intend.

|
| I guess one point that I wanted to make was that this flat yet
| infinite soupy space was as common to surrealism as was the
| infinite horizon 'dreamscapes' of Dali and followers.

I have been experimenting *a lot* with things such as the "infinite
soupy space" as part of an overall attempt to separate a background from
foreground objects in architectural style images while avoiding the
massive depth and wild lens angles of architectural photography. I am
trying to find the least distorted way of depicting an infinite space
behind my subject. Not a void space, but a space full of atmosphere.

I have done several images with non-rational subjects and these types of
backgrounds, but will be applying what I have discovered to my current,
"rational", and possibly last image.

This one is a gift for my wife, so I need to be very careful. I know
that some of her favorite artists are Chagall, Morisot, Mondrian, and
Brassai. I also know that she likes video game type art (sci-fi,
final-fantasy type stuff). The sci-fi stuff would be a fun challenge,
and I'm pretty sure that I could capture enough of the look of a Brassai
to please her, but none of these would look correct in our home. On the
other hand, I can't really make something too abstract. My wife does not
have a lot in common with her family, so she will most enjoy a Dec. 25
present for which she can share her appreciation with them, rather that
something that would bring attention to their differences.

I have selected an easy way out of that dilemma. I'm going to dazzle
them all with details. My wife recognizes cg mud like "Pov Planet", so
for her sake these will need to be real details. The subject matter is
banal, but the level of detail will be striking. So striking that a
casual viewer (like a member of her family) *should* be so wowed by it
that he will hardly notice what I know to be the very unpopular style of
my images.

Anyway, back to where I started. The gift will have an infinite
atmosphere type background. Long way to get around to a point, I know.

 -Shay

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